beloved
by vaatu
Summary: You are mine/You are mine/You are mine.
1. Chapter 1

1.

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><p>Ever Grande glitters under the haze of city air, making up for the starless sky with neon glows and shines close enough to touch. It advertises the here and now, broadcasting trainers' Victory journeys in every pub on Tohjo Street, showcasing Elite battles on Nimbasa and scandals on Sunyshore; not a single building on Galactic Avenue hosts the same contents every day, allowing the public to explore it anew without fear of redundancy. It represents the new era, specialists say—history, after all, is a thing of the past.<p>

Somewhere inside the labyrinth to the north, Hoenn's Champion descends a set of steps that have never been allowed to witness the city as it is today. They curve southward at the will of the stone on either side, ending in a modern device that clashes with the surrounding aesthetic: a door.

Steven presses his fingertips to the scanner and waits.

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><p>title and summary from <em>Beloved<em> by Toni Morrison. it is not my work, and neither is Pokemon.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

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><p>Hoenn, a predominantly secular nation except within its extreme factions, is no place for a common fortune-teller to seek business. Outside of Fallarbor, though, perched on a crater's edge so that the eastern face of the house extended several feet below its parallel wall, lived the world's gifted and cursed.<p>

Louisa Tiamat was told—she could never do the telling herself, only able to relay the messages given to her in the most basic translations—that, upon its birth, her child would be messenger of the world as she was, and treated as mercilessly for it. These horrors that lived with her would not die out as she did, leaving the people to rest at ease, removed from the one chance they would have to alter their worldview gruesomely. No, they would live on, breaking her child from the inside, tricking others into thinking that they could glean any sort of closure from opening up the eternal minefield of questions, the future of the world that is so much bigger than a single person's selfish mind.

When she learned she had twins, she closed the shop doors for good.

What the world refused to tell her was that each malady, ingrained as it was in her sullen soul, would pull along the very thing they were attached to as she left its physical container. Whether this happened by coincidence or because of a direct correlation between her soul's final deed and its inability to go where souls go is irrelevant.

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><p>please be aware that this is not stevenzinnia; the title and summary (and genres, for that matter) are in reference to the book _Beloved_. reasons why will become apparent in chapter 4.

also, please excuse the oc here. think of her as a function of the plot.


	3. Chapter 3

He is twenty-four again and former champion Hypatia is taking his hand, folding into it an item ball that clicks and clacks impatiently as it shifts in his palm. Her hands shake as she pulls them away, partially from age and partially from the loss she suffers by doing this. But now is better than later; younger is better than older; spreading knowledge is better than hoarding it.

"There is a door in the Ever Grande library," she says, and she does not mean the one on the corner of Canalave and Sixth. "You know where it is—or, Leader Wallace does, anyhow."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Steven says, making a show of keeping his face blank.

Hypatia smiles as if well aware of a furtively-kept secret, and Steven suspects she knows exactly what his reddening face is failing to hide. To keep the Champion seat for fourteen years requires not only skill, but cleverness; she does not lack deductive reasoning.

Filling her shoes will be a dangerous task.

"Behind that door is information of which you now hold complete custody." She looks at him gravely. "This is not a place to take Leader Wallace. This is not a place to tell anyone about, verbally or otherwise. This is a place which you should forget about until it is imperative that you remember. Do you understand?"

He nods impassively, tucking away the item ball deep within his bag.

"There may be need of it in the coming months. I expect you will know when it becomes necessary." And she smiles again as if all is well, as if she feels perfectly comfortable letting the region's secrets leave her worn hands and discover a new master.

Steven looks at his hands and wonders if he can be trusted.

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><p>if cryptic isn't your thing, i'm gonna warn you right now that next chapter will be even more confusing. answers might come in chapter five. also, they might not.<p>

B)


	4. Chapter 4

it is so incredible how they roam around and play as if there is nothing wrong with their surroundings. do they not notice? do they really not yet notice that everything they can possibly be exposed to in this house is wrong and wretched and terrible and repulsive and hideous?

a woman forgot her shawl in the coatroom once. she left in a hurry and never called to claim it. they drape it around their shoulders and pretend to be people they've only met on the outside.

the conference room is thick with bad air from bad visions and they dare each other to open the door a crack.

i am and will be the only victim of this house.

but they have to know already, don't they?

they know. they definitely know, but they don't understand that they know

they cannot understand. i won't let them

the first one is cautious. she knows and she might understand. dangerous. she is cautious. she can't spend her entire life being cautious. she will age too fast.

the last one understands everything or nothing. she herself is dangerous. she will power headstrong into every situation she can and she will save them and she will realize or she will not realize that she uses her own life force for it and she will never ever ever stop even if she realizes because she is everything or nothing and her values are set in stone.

aster and zinnia, i am your mother and i love you

aster/zinnia, you need to understand me, okay?

asterzinnia i will never allow you to understand

i will never allow you to understand i will never let you grow old enough to understand i will never allow you to ask me when you age enough to stand on the edge of knowledge i will never allow you to fall i will never allow them to push you into it i will never allow you to be me

(I am your mother and I love you and I will not let them take you, too, not like they took me, not like they took It and put it inside my head and used my body to host two unlike creatures. I will not let them curse you for our ancestors' faults.)

so you understand why I have to do this,

right?

I am your mother and I love you

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><p>and now, back to your regularly-scheduled grammar and formatting<p> 


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